Vincent Harding was a prominent figure in the Southern Freedom movement of the 1960s. He was also a noted scholar with advanced degreed in journalism and history.
He had been a close associate of Martin Luther King's and even wrote one of his most famous speeches, "A Time to Break Silence" which condemned the Vietnam War and was delivered by King one year to the day before he was assassinated April 4, 1968. This episode replays a speech given BY Dr. Harding called "MArtin Luther King and Barack Obama's Other Ancestors." This speech was delivered on the campus of the University of Winnipeg on April 2, 2009, only 41 days into the presidency of America's first black president. Among other themes, this talk traces some of the less talked about aspects of the civil rights struggle, and of King's own evolution following the famous "I Have a Dream speech from 1963. Criutically, it probes the popular notion of Obama as the realization of King's dream.